The Cleveland Cavaliers appear to be the worst team in the NBA. The Golden State Warriors are one of the best teams ever.

But over the course of one trip up and down the court, it’s not unlikely for the Cavs to outscore the Warriors. Actually, the odds of either team winning a single exchange is probably pretty close to 50/50.

It’s less likely that the Cavs could beat the Warriors over the course of an entire game, but it’s still feasible. One bad outing by the Warriors paired with some hot shooting from the Cavs, and it could happen pretty easily. Maybe the odds are 1 in 10.

If the two teams were to play a seven-game series, things start to look a bit different. It’s possible that the Cavs could steal a game, or maybe even two if they’re lucky. But it’s almost inconceivable to imagine them winning four.

Intuitively, this all makes sense.

We know that underdogs tend to slow games down to limit the number of possessions, and we understand why most playoff matchups are decided over the course of a series.

But how often do we think about this in the context of our own lives?

“Winning” or making a single good business decision is more or less a matter of luck. We try our best to make educated decisions, but ultimately outside factors typically play a large role.

So the difference between a good employee and a bad one might be that the good employee is right 55% of the time when making difficult decisions and the bad one is right 50% of the time. Ultimately pretty similar in effectiveness.

Over the course of a week, or even a month, it’s actually almost equally likely that the two employees will make decisions that result in positive outcomes. But over an extended period, say a year, the difference starts to become more obvious. And over an entire career, it’s almost night and day.

We often fail to accept that isolated results can be largely determined by luck. Particularly in situations with high variability, we can rarely tie a close link between an action and a result.

But as we progress and the sample size grows, the results become less and less dependant on luck. Until eventually, it isn’t luck at all.

-Brandon